JOUVANCY, JOSEPH de. - Jesuit, philologist, pedagogue and historian, b. in Paris on 14 Sept. 1643, d. in Rome on 29 May 1719. He taught Latin and Greek letters for many years in the Colleges of Compiègne, Caen, La Flèche, and Paris, until in 1699 he was called to Rome to continue the Historia Societatis Iesu, begun by Fr. Niccolò Orlandini, to which he devoted himself until his death.
The fruit of assiduous study and of long teaching according to the prescriptions of the Ratio studiorum was an exquisite command of classical Latin, in which he composed his works; several tragedies, performed by the pupils; editions of Latin classics with commentary for schools; the Satires of Juvenal and of Persius, the Comedies of Terence, the Odes and the Ars poetica of Horace, the Epigrams of Martial, the Metamorphoses of Ovid, the De officiis, Cato maior and Laelius of Cicero; Latin versions of various French works; orations, panegyrics. The Novus apparatus Graeco-Latinus cum interpretatione Gallica (Paris 1681) went through numerous editions. His Historiae Societatis Iesu Pars V from 1561 to 1616 (Rome 1710), was in 1715 prohibited by the Parliament of Paris on account of certain judgments contrary to the absolutism adopted by the Bourbons, and in 1722 placed on the Index (decree of 29 July) for certain passages on the Chinese rites contrary to the papal decree De ritibus sinensibus, « quibus deletis, liber permittitur ». The Pars VI, up to 1645, has remained unpublished, and was taken up by G. C. Cordara, who made use of it for the period 1617-32.
In pedagogy, particular importance attaches to his De ratione discendi et docendi (Paris 1691; then, after careful examination, Florence 1703), as the official text for all Jesuit professors. A work by an expert, who lavishes in it the treasures of his study and of his lively enthusiasm for the school.
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